4 ms·

The really funny part is that this is probably fairly easy to achieve in the United States. The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the m

The really funny part is that this is probably fairly easy to achieve in the United States. The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Currently people all over the world are free to move to New York, which makes the city unaffordable. If you forbade anyone not born within it from moving there, Manhattan would be fairly affordable and homelessness would be much reduced. All you need to do is to free yourself from that bourgeois delusion that a man from Mexico (or worse, West Virginia) has any right to live in that city.

vintagedave 1y ago
> The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Ouch: straight to being against others. No, the part you'd need to implement to get socialised housing is socialised housing. Similarly, there are modern equivalents to guaranteed jobs. Communism believed everyone had to work: today we have different ideas of purpose than Marx had, plus are more aware of those who cannot work, or the value of non-work social contributions, and tech folks like us might believe in or hope for an upcoming post-scarcity society, with a transition period of UBI. I expect you want to control migration and residency in order to avoid freeloaders. Freeloaders are remarkably rare, most people have self-respect and enjoy being productive, and interestingly systems that exterminate freeloaders entirely tend to be less efficient.[1] Plus, if you have a wonderful system, the best way to handle other people wanting it is to help it grow, not limit it to yourself. A better policy would be one encouraging its growth elsewhere in other countries where all those folk who are coming to your shores are coming from. The US has a long (mixed) history of that approach re democracy. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
- username332211 1y ago
  What freeloaders are you talking about? This is complete nonsense. Residency controls exist to solve the Economic Problem. The amount of people that want to live in global cities is endless. Even if you socialize all the housing in New York, there will be people that want to live in the city but won't be able to. It is the job of the economic system to determine who gets in and who doesn't. That's why socialized housing requires residency controls, but if those were implemented in the United States, the country could reap the specified benefits of of the Soviet system. Finally, you speak of encouraging growth elsewhere, but what can be more productive for the growth of West Virginia, than to tell every man born in that state that he shall also die in that state. What can be better for industrial development, but a labor force that can't move away? It's so sad to see communists cling to capitalist concepts like that. Communism has no future so long as it's supporters refuse to understand that Marx's magnificent philosophical and political system rejects borgeous human rights.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    That's not true and the City of Vienna proved that thesis wrong a century ago. [0]. Even today, two-thirds of Viennese residents live in public housing, the city is Europe's largest landlord and as a result, housing is extremely affordable for a world-class city. It's not without reason that Vienna tends to top worldwide quality of life rankings - it's the achievements of Red Vienna. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
    - username332211 1y ago
      The city of Vienna has a fairly unique history. It used to be the capital of a massive empire that's now gone, and thus suffered a period of fairly prolonged decline. It's population declined from 2.4 million in 1914[1] to 1.5 million in the 1980s[2]. The only reason why it's currently considered even close to a world-class city is that after the fall of the Berlin wall it was the natural financial hub for oligarchic capital. I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline. And that we can't really evaluate if the city is solving the economic problem well or badly, as right now it's simply less acute for historical reasons that have nothing to do with it's housing policy. [1] https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-eve-first-world-wa https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-e... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vienna/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vien...
      - saubeidl 1y ago
        > I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline That is not the case in Vienna, either. The government built enough units to supply ten percent of the total market and used that leverage to drive down prices. Before that, a large portion lived in squalor. > But from 1923 to 1934, in a period known as Red Vienna, the ruling Social Democratic Party built 64,000 new units in 400 housing blocks, increasing the city’s housing supply by about 10 percent. Some 200,000 people, one-tenth of the population, were rehoused in these buildings, with rents set at 3.5 percent of the average semiskilled worker’s income, enough to cover the cost of maintenance and operation
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  Freeloaders are rare but their behavior patterns spread to those that are working on a massive scale. With enough demotivation due to freeloaders, the whole system creaks under its own weight.

vintagedave 1y ago

> The only part of the Soviet system you'd need to implement is the migration and residency control regime. Ouch: straight to being against others. No, the part you'd need to implement to get socialised housing is socialised housing. Similarly, there are modern equivalents to guaranteed jobs. Communism believed everyone had to work: today we have different ideas of purpose than Marx had, plus are more aware of those who cannot work, or the value of non-work social contributions, and tech folks like us might believe in or hope for an upcoming post-scarcity society, with a transition period of UBI. I expect you want to control migration and residency in order to avoid freeloaders. Freeloaders are remarkably rare, most people have self-respect and enjoy being productive, and interestingly systems that exterminate freeloaders entirely tend to be less efficient.[1] Plus, if you have a wonderful system, the best way to handle other people wanting it is to help it grow, not limit it to yourself. A better policy would be one encouraging its growth elsewhere in other countries where all those folk who are coming to your shores are coming from. The US has a long (mixed) history of that approach re democracy. [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fraud/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

username332211 1y ago
What freeloaders are you talking about? This is complete nonsense. Residency controls exist to solve the Economic Problem. The amount of people that want to live in global cities is endless. Even if you socialize all the housing in New York, there will be people that want to live in the city but won't be able to. It is the job of the economic system to determine who gets in and who doesn't. That's why socialized housing requires residency controls, but if those were implemented in the United States, the country could reap the specified benefits of of the Soviet system. Finally, you speak of encouraging growth elsewhere, but what can be more productive for the growth of West Virginia, than to tell every man born in that state that he shall also die in that state. What can be better for industrial development, but a labor force that can't move away? It's so sad to see communists cling to capitalist concepts like that. Communism has no future so long as it's supporters refuse to understand that Marx's magnificent philosophical and political system rejects borgeous human rights.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  That's not true and the City of Vienna proved that thesis wrong a century ago. [0]. Even today, two-thirds of Viennese residents live in public housing, the city is Europe's largest landlord and as a result, housing is extremely affordable for a world-class city. It's not without reason that Vienna tends to top worldwide quality of life rankings - it's the achievements of Red Vienna. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-housing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/magazine/vienna-social-ho...
  - username332211 1y ago
    The city of Vienna has a fairly unique history. It used to be the capital of a massive empire that's now gone, and thus suffered a period of fairly prolonged decline. It's population declined from 2.4 million in 1914[1] to 1.5 million in the 1980s[2]. The only reason why it's currently considered even close to a world-class city is that after the fall of the Berlin wall it was the natural financial hub for oligarchic capital. I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline. And that we can't really evaluate if the city is solving the economic problem well or badly, as right now it's simply less acute for historical reasons that have nothing to do with it's housing policy. [1] https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-eve-first-world-wa https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/growing-city-vienna-e... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vienna/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/20107/vien...
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      > I think we can all agree not many great and global cities have tons of free housing emptied by a prolonged period of decline That is not the case in Vienna, either. The government built enough units to supply ten percent of the total market and used that leverage to drive down prices. Before that, a large portion lived in squalor. > But from 1923 to 1934, in a period known as Red Vienna, the ruling Social Democratic Party built 64,000 new units in 400 housing blocks, increasing the city’s housing supply by about 10 percent. Some 200,000 people, one-tenth of the population, were rehoused in these buildings, with rents set at 3.5 percent of the average semiskilled worker’s income, enough to cover the cost of maintenance and operation
mensetmanusman 1y ago
Freeloaders are rare but their behavior patterns spread to those that are working on a massive scale. With enough demotivation due to freeloaders, the whole system creaks under its own weight.